Arkansas Crossroads block

Hi everybody, it's Callie again! I know it's been a little while and my block post should have been up by now.... but I couldn't find anything on the history of this block and I don't know what to say! My dad asked me if I was sick because I always have something to say.

So this block is called an Arkansas Crossroads block. The best I could find on it was that it's used a lot in Arkansas quilt guilds, which doesn't really help me? Except that I wonder what kinds of blocks my state would have. (I can probably look that up!)

I actually had a fourth color but I decided against using it because... well, honestly it's pretty and I still am not trying to repeat fabrics. And it would only show a little bit of that fabric. (I think you might maybe see it this month though.) I had enough left over of my other two that it worked out okay

this is how we sew so we can watch tv :P

So I thought I would talk about something else. My family really likes music, and we listen to a lot of different kinds of music and it's always a lot of fun and we learn something along the way. And this one musician from Mississippi in the 1930s, Robert Johnson, he has a song called "Crossroad Blues." (Or "Crossroads!")

A really really famous legend that can be found in almost every biography about Robert Johnson is that the song "Crossroads" secretly tells the story of how he got his musical talent by making a bargain with a devil at a crossroads. I don't know if it's true or not, but a lot of Robert Johnson music has supernatural mythology attached to it, and also I guess people like to think that it might be true because he died super young and nobody really knows how... or where he is buried.

I think that's all really interesting so I looked it up and I guess a lot of religions use crossroads legends in their stories. I don't really think that Robert Johnson sold his soul for musical talent, I imagine he probably just worked really hard for it...but also maybe that he might not have stopped that rumor from spreading either because it got people talking about him? I don't know how early "there's no such thing as bad press" started!

Anyway, the "Crossroads" song has been redone a lot by lots of artists, like Eric Clapton, but I kind of prefer the Delta Blues version over all of them.

And that is what I thought about the most while I made this block. I know it's not really history, at least not of quilting, but sometimes I think you have to admit defeat and just ramble on about something else for a while.

I really liked this block though! To be honest I wouldn't mind making a whole quilt with this block, because while I was researching I found quite a few finished Arkansas Crossroads quilts and they were really pretty. I thought this one would take me a long time to do but honestly it took less time than the yellow Pennsylvania block I did a few entries ago. I think I might be getting a little better too!

Here are all my blocks together! I'm getting a pretty big stack put together!

This month's blocks have JUST been put up not very long ago and I'm really looking forward to doing those too!

-Callie

Outfit:
Dress: Saige's Sparkle Dress
Boots: OG Let's Motor